I am thinking of putting a few starcannons back into my standard lists. When I first came back to the game and found them to only be heavy2 instead of the glorydays of heavy3, and the scatter laser getting a bump from heavy d6 to a straight heavy4 it seemed a no brainer to take the extra shots at the much lower points cost. I am beginning to rethink this however, and for one major reason only...
'Feel No Pain'! It seems to me that there are a great number of things out there that benefit from the 'feel no pain' special rule and quite frankly scatterlasers might as well be lasguns for all they're worth against FNP models.
Think about it. Mark of Nurgle models from Chaos Deamons, Nurgle Deamons from Chaos Deamons, both popular troops choices specifically because of feel no pain. Then you have Ork Nobs running (or riding in the case of Nob bikers) around with feel no pain from the painboy upgrade. More recently though we are seeing the ability for certain powers or models to be able to 'give' other units/models feel no pain. In the Blood Angels Codex this comes in the form of the Blood Chalice carried by Sanguinary Priests and for the Tyranids the Hive Tyrant has an ability that allows one unit nearby to gain FNP till the beginning of the next Tyranid turn (I only discovered this this past weekend at 'Ard Boyz and have no idea what the ability is called). I am sure that there are other things out there but these I feel are all going to be common enough to warrant the inclusion of a few FNP ignoring weapons into an army list.
The question then becomes where do I put them? In my usual army lists I don't have to many places where I can upgrade/change heavy weapons other than my grav tanks. So I have to choose between the Falcons or the Wave Serpents. I think this is a no brainer here. The Falcon will usually be firing it's pulse laser if it's firing anything so Starcannons would be a bit wasted here, so the scatter lasers stay here. The wave serpents though with only the one heavy weapon and the fact that they are twin-linked seems like the perfect place.
Now, for most of my time playing 40k I have believed in putting Brightlances on Wave Serpents because it's just about the most reliable place to have them if you want them to do something. I now have enough tankbusting ability, though, between the Pulselasers on my Falcons, my Fire Dragons and all of the singing spears and witchblades running about the table that I feel I can probably get away without those 2 or 3 brightlances. With the Points saved I can even upgrade the shuriken catapults on the Wave Serpents to shuriken cannons adding a bit more dakka to the tank overall.
I don't really know what the Math-hammer comparison is for a str6 ap6 heavy4 weapon vs. a str6 ap2 heavy2 weapon vs. a FNP unit, but I think for my tastes it's got to be good enough to warrant the peace of mind.
What do you think? Does this have any merit whatsoever? Or am I just mad?
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